ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Assessments of cochlear implants in children are an essential part of the paediatric cochlear implant program, because it is important to describe benefits of cochlear implants in children in terms of speech perception skills. The purpose of this study was to examine speech perception abilities of children with cochlear implants on a battery of speech perception tests assigned according to categories of speech perception skills. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirteen children with prelingual onsets of deafness were evaluated with a battery of speech perception tests with audition alone at preimplantation and 6 month intervals from initial stimulation. The children ranged in age from 2 years 9 months to 10 years 11 months. Speech perception test scores were tabulated and each child was placed into one of speech perception categories. The speech perception categories consisted of ten levels from poor detection of speech sound (0) to very good open-set speech recognition (9). RESULTS: All children demonstrated better speech perception skills with cochlear implants than they had with hearing aids before implantation. Five of them showed some open-set speech perception at 6 months of implant use. CONCLUSION: The performance of children improved with experience of the implant. The speech perception categories were useful for comparing the children and designing training objectives and tasks.